A woman with desperation in her eyes sings this Latin line to us: ‘Me Miseram quid agam, I am so sad, what can I do?!’ And a second woman, singing in Arabic, clearly hopes that we will hear her voice when she sings to us: ‘Min al acmaaq / From the depths I call to you’. In the beginning of my music these two women sing together, but each with her own melody.
When I started working on the first part of this composition, it was about the disastrous events in Afghanistan a few years ago. But alas, numerous wars have been started since then.
That’s why I have combined the Arabic and Latin sounds of part one in the second and third parts with Persian and Hebrew lines. These melodies are heard while the choir sings Gregorian and baroque words about the same. The whole music reflects the despair and the loss that everyone experiences during a war. You hear the intense sadness and desperation about the loss of a loved one who cannot be found. And like in all wars, we often don’t even hear the people who cry for help to us from the darkness. In this music, you cannot ignore these cries.
The combination of Western and Eastern sounds also shows that a common musical ground can be found between cultures. It shows that it is indeed possible to communicate between East and West if we only listen to each other.
In ‘Somnium al Salaam / Dream of Peace you don’t need to understand the words sung in all the different languages you hear: Arabic, Persian, Hebrew, Spanish and Latin. Just try to listen to the emotion of the singer, and you will understand most of the music. In ‘Somnium al Salaam’, I have tried to picture the difficult road we all must follow, no matter what culture we’re from. We are all trying to reach the dream of ultimate harmony, rest, peace and light fo everyone: Paradise, Al-Djallah. I would love it if you could hear this in the music I wrote.
Gerard Beljon
Composers in the crosshairs of our attention